


A Dream of Flying

by Pippin4242



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Gen, fuck you fei wang they're good kids, purposeless wish fulfilment, still not a happy fic though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin4242/pseuds/Pippin4242
Summary: On their loneliest night, two souls touch across time and space. A moment of comfort, in the long dark.





	A Dream of Flying

To be a true dreamseer is to stand outside space. Few people amongst the myriad realities are naturally given to so mindful an existence, and fewer still take up that identity and live it day by day. That handful of dreamseers, though hardly of a single mind and will, tend to have certain things in common. They are clever, knowledgeable, learned. And they can reach each other across realities, and they stand a little aloof from their own.

This is not a story about dreamseers, but of two powerful people who might, in another life, have been counted among them.

\---

There was snow on snow and his feet had been cold but unharmed for so long that he'd almost forgotten how to feel them. Damage accrued differently here. And where there wasn't snow, there were bodies.

At first he'd wanted to name them, but then he'd found an actual name, on a letter sticking out from the undergarments of one of the executed criminals. He'd felt worse about that than all the rest of it, somehow, so he didn't think about naming them any more. He couldn't make them into friends like this; they'd already each been somebody before they were flung into the pit alongside him.

Yuui was sure he had it better than his twin in the tower. By day he would move bodies to more useful spots, and try over and over to scale the wall. Fai, high above, could only watch and wait, beyond even hearing range.

At night, though – at night, it was less pleasant. The moon over the snow threw the strangest shadows over the faces of the bodies. As though they could be anything less pleasant than the fall-crushed corpses he knew them to be! But mangled features which were familiar and unrotting by day became something far less predictable by night. Sometimes, when the need for sleep finally halfheartedly arrived, Yuui would crouch with his back against the wall, so he could face the sea of death head on. Sometimes he would try to clear a larger space on the floor of the pit than usual, and sleep in the middle of that. And sometimes, to the shame he'd thought he'd be beyond by now, he would choose one of the corpses with a kinder face – he had favourites – and curl with his back to theirs, trying desperately to imagine that it was Fai behind him, warm instead of cold.

His vision would blur in from the edges as sleep slowly overcame his will to stay watchful. The cold, white faces around him would disappear into a bleeding mist of hazy unfocus.

The nights were long. But sometimes, out of habit, Yuui slept.

\---

Youou was alone, more alone than he had ever imagined possible. He knew that terrible things must have happened, but he wanted to keep walking away from the place where he'd started off. A nasty sensation, like claws at his neck, made him sure that he shouldn't stop to think about what he was walking away from. He just had to keep moving. Considering things meant realisation, and he was grimly aware that realisation was Bad.

But his body wasn't responding as well as it usually did. He was dragging more than just the load he'd picked up at home; his legs felt leaden, and his shoulders felt as though they were tearing off with the weight. He knew he wouldn't be able to keep walking much longer, and that sooner or later he'd have to sleep.

Even so, dammit, he was going to keep going until he fell, and not a power in the world could stop him.

\---

When Yuui came to himself, he was confused, and it took him a moment to realise why: there were no familiar faces staring blankly back at him. No cold but solid presence at his back. He considered this. Gingerly, he stood – and felt nothing. At first he thought his feet were numb with cold, as they often were, but when he looked down he found that the reason he couldn't feel the ground was that... there wasn't any.

A dream, then, or at least some work against him more interesting than scrabbling to get out for another morning. He'd need an awful lot more prisoners to 'befriend' him before he could get anywhere near the top, of that much he was sure.

His vision was strange and murky at the edges, like it usually was when sleep dragged him in, but the air was less chilly than he'd grown accustomed to, and he didn't feel the cold-iron feel in his chest that the magical void had been inducing.

Yuui looked critically at his hand for a moment, and it exploded in a blast of shimmering purple flower-fire, which slowly sparked and crackled itself away.

A dream, then. He'd have every right to dream himself in a real outfit, instead of his prisoner's shift, but try as he might, he didn't seem to be able to shake this self-image. Likely it was because Fai wasn't with him, and it didn't seem fair, he decided. How lonely, to come to a new place, however fictional, and leave his twin behind him!

Still. Ground or no ground, here he could _run_.

Yuui launched himself, pressing off from nothing in a sort of itchy half-bounding waddle. Realising the problem, he hoicked his shift up and really leapt forward, feeling his thighs stretch for the first time in what must have been months.

It couldn't possibly be real, but it felt so, so good.

He laughed, and he ran and ran, through nothing, to nothing, until his small, under-utilised lungs stung and his sides ached, and he began to tumble down nothing, towards nothing, until he came to a confused, rolling stop. In front of – well, not something, but _someone_.

Red eyes glittered in the mist.

Well, reasoned Yuui to himself. He probably couldn't die in dreams. And to be perfectly frank, if he did, who cared at this point? It might even help Fai out!

“Hello?” he said aloud, picking himself up from the unfloor, and taking a few cautious steps forward. “Hello, am I sleeping? Can you tell me?”

The mist cleared a little as he came towards the seated figure. Maybe it was just easier to focus when he had something to look at, mused Yuui.

It was a boy. A boy of about his own age, with tattered clothes, furious eyes, a smear of blood across his face, and a sword taller than he was. The boy knelt, gripping the monstrous hilt of the sword lying across his legs with his two small fists.

“Hello,” said Yuui again, suddenly a little shy. He couldn't think that he or Fai had ever had a conversation with anybody their own age before, except once or twice with the children of servants, who had been swiftly shooed away. As if curses were _transmissible_.

The boy looked at him, and grimaced. His young face seemed to be capable of even harsher expressions than the one he'd started with. Amazing, really.

“You a ghost?” he growled.

“No,” said Yuui, and sat down next to him. “I think. Are you?”

“You're all pale and dressed in white robes, and you've got creepy hair,” objected the red-eyed boy, possibly reasonably.

“I'm pale even if I take the robes off, and I don't have a hairbrush,” admitted Yuui. “Anyway, you've got blood on you, and a great big sword, and I didn't ask if you were a demon. Even though I was thinking it.”

“Demon?” spat the boy. “Demons are huge, and they've got _yellow_ eyes, and, uh, too many bits. I _wish_ I was a demon.”

“Why?” asked Yuui, surprised.

“Because strong creatures can protect anything they want,” he replied, firmly, as though it had been obvious.

“Oh.” Yuui thought about this. “I'm strong, and I can't seem to protect anything.”

“You don't look very strong. Are you _sure_ you're not a ghost? You don't look normal.”

“I look pretty normal, I think... I look like my family. The shift isn't something I'd normally wear,” he allowed, pulling at the cheap cloth vaguely. “It's p – uh, it's, um, punishment clothes.”

“You're being punished?” his companion asked, with rising interest. “What did you do?”

“Tried to protect anything I wanted, I suppose,” said Yuui, miserably. “Are you real? You're not Valerian, I think.”

“I don't know where Valeria is. I'm from Nihon. I'm – the boy looked around, as if to check that nobody was listening – Youou.”

“Youou,” murmured Yuui, letting the name percolate in his mouth. “Youou. This is nice, actually. Even if it's only in a dream, it's ages since I've talked to anyone who could talk back. I'm Yuui. Can I touch you?”

“Touch me how,” asked Youou, tensely.

“It's – it's all corpses, where I am now. I just want to feel someone alive. Please.”

“Oh,” said Youou, deflated. “Okay. I'm sorry about the blood. I didn't know.”

“I miss my brother,” said Yuui, quietly. He took hold of Youou's unresisting arm, and lifted it, moving on his knees to press against the boy's side. “You're real, thank the stars, you're real, I'm sure you are, even though I've never heard of Nihon...” He pressed his face into Youou's shoulder and deeply inhaled his totally different, totally human smell.

“Why can't you have a hairbrush?” asked Youou, gently lowering his arm, and finding that it crossed tangled lengths of blonde hair as it settled. “Is that part of the punishment? For protecting people?”

“Yeah, I guess,” sniffled Yuui, his voice gaining strength again. “More like they would never have thought of giving me one. It's not that kind of prison. Do you have magic, Youou? I don't sense any on you.”

“You have magic?” Youou asked, surprised. “Not me. Did you bring me here? I was – lonely,” he finished, lamely.

“I think I might have been the loneliest I've ever been,” admitted Yuui. “But I shouldn't be able to do magic in prison. It's suppressed at that point in the ground.”

“I've heard of people walking through dreams before,” mused Youou. His voice was deep for his age, and he seemed like someone who, under normal circumstances, was strong and assertive. Maybe even a natural leader. “Do you think they're a different – place?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Yuui, who hadn't thought of it that way before. “Your intuition is good. I think that could be the case. If only I could take my body with me I could get away, and then they'd have to let my brother go.”

“Your brother's –” Youou, with a seer's tenacity, stopped. “He's what you tried to protect? You're what he tried to protect?”

Yuui nodded, finding it too hard to agree aloud.

“So you can't really do anything about it, if you're trapped somewhere unmagical in real life,” considered Youou. “But I suppose you knew that. Were you just lonely?”

“I think so,” he said quietly. “I'm sorry to drag you here.”

Youou gripped him tightly around the shoulders with the arm not steadying his gigantic sword. “It's okay,” he said, with youthful frankness. “You're allowed to want help.”

“It's _so_ lonely,” confessed Yuui, and sobbed into the boy's torn sleeve. “I have to, I have to be strong, I want to get him out _so_ badly, but they won't even let us stay together, I miss him _so_ much...”

“You're really thin,” muttered Youou, and pulled him closer, barely avoiding the unsheathed sword. “If they've made you a prisoner they should at least be feeding you. I don't like it.”

“But you're lonely too,” protested Yuui, from under his arm. “What happened to you? There's got to be a reason it's you. You've got, got _blood_ and an _enormous_ sword...” He clung to Youou's tattered robes.

“Yeah!” realised Youou. “Yeah, it's – it's pretty bad. I'm not in prison.” He rested his cheek against Yuui's head. “There was – an attack on my father's land. I think I'm the only one left alive.” A sob caught in his chest. “I'm all on my own! I couldn't protect them!”

Yuui reached out and put his hand on the hilt of the monstrous sword. “I'm going to move this, okay?” he checked, as he gently pushed the sword out of the other boy's lap.

“Okay!” agreed Youou, and seized Yuui into a tight embrace, nuzzling into his hair. They clung to one another as Youou's breath slowed and Yuui closed his eyes, imagining a prettier truth.

“I'm glad you're in my dream,” said Youou. “I wish I had a brother coming to save me.” Yuui was aware that there was probably blood getting rubbed into his shift and hair, and he wished he could bring it back to the waking world.

“You'll be okay,” said Yuui, into Youou's robes. “It's not your fault. I know you tried to protect them, just like I tried. You can only follow whatever path's open to you, right? I think... you'll protect more people, when you're grown. I really do. You're making me feel protected right now.”

“Thanks. And I bet you'll get out fine. You're more powerful than whoever put you in prison if you can escape in your sleep,” Youou said, encouragingly.

“I hope so.”

Youou was so warm, and his arms so strong.

Yuui was so soft, and it felt so good to be needed.

The two stayed in the placeless mist until they slept once more.

Before they awoke, they would lose all but the feeling of this moment.

\---

Youou dragged his mother's body onwards, clutching Ginryu for all he was worth. He didn't have a plan, but he'd protect her from harm, no matter who tried to take her from him.

There were figures cresting the hill. Somebody was pointing down to him.

That could not be allowed.

\---

Yuui ran up the pile of corpses, no longer caring that he was standing on hands, on stomachs, on faces. He threw himself at the wall, as high as he could manage, and desperately clawed at the unyielding stone.

He was going to get them both out, whatever it took.


End file.
